Hold them accountable!

William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove talks about the California school shooting rampage:

According to the Brady Campaign, California is the state with the most gun restrictions. They have 8 laws on “assault weapons” and magazine size. Eleven on background checks. Seven on high risk gun possession. Twelve on buyer regulations. Seven for possession. Eighteen for domestic violence. The Washington Post Editorial Board seems to forget this:

So inured has this country become to mass shootings that when another person with a semiautomatic weapon goes on a rampage, we’re conditioned to focus on reactions, rather than root causes. In the case of an incident in Northern California on Tuesday, we feel gratitude that quick action by school officials saved children’s lives, that police acted heroically and that this time only five people were killed. Yet what ought to be foremost is rage at the refusal of lawmakers to take action that might prevent these needless tragedies — and a renewed demand for sensible gun-control regulations, including a ban on assault weapons and comprehensive background checks with better enforcement.

There’s more at the original, with Mr Teach documenting the Pyrite State’s restrictions on firearms, all the kind of things the Post’s Editorial Board wants to see done. But what got to me was a paragraph Mr Tech quoted, from a different source, further down:

(Newser) The man who killed five people in a shooting rampage in California on Tuesday was banned by court order from owning firearms—and police are being criticized for failing to take action after neighbors in Rancho Tehama Reserve complained that he had been firing hundreds of rounds. At a press conference Wednesday, Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston said Kevin Janson Neal refused to cooperate with investigators, the Sacramento Bee reports. “He was not law enforcement friendly. He would not come to the door,” Johnston said. “You have to understand, we can’t anticipate what people are going to do. We don’t have a crystal ball.” Neal was out on bail after being charged with assault in January.

So here you had a man, banned by law and court order, from possessing firearms, and the authorities not only knew that he had them, but had been firing ‘hundreds of rounds,’ yet they did nothing. From the referenced article in The Sacramento Bee:

At least twice, (Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston) said, deputies placed the home under surveillance in hopes that he would emerge, but he never did. . . . .

Tehama County Superior Court records show he was charged in the January incident with assault, false imprisonment, battery and other charges in connection with an attack on two women in his neighborhood. He was accused of firing shots at the two women, stabbing one of them, and “holding them hostage for a period of time,” District Attorney Gregg Cohen said Wednesday. Neal was released on $160,000 bail.

Cohen said in a video news release Wednesday that the protective order was issued in late February, after Neal was released on bail and the two women he was accused of assaulting filed a complaint. “The two victims were scared and concerned (about) Neal attacking them,” Cohen said. “Neal harassed them repeatedly since being out on bail by repeatedly calling the California Department of Forestry, or Cal Fire, and claiming that he smelled smells, believing them to be manufacturing methamphetamine.”

So, you have a violent man released on bail, with two women complaining about his actions after being released on bail, and neighbors complaining that he was firing off hundreds of rounds of weapons, and the most that deputies did was set up video surveillance of his home, because he was ‘not law enforcement friendly’ and wouldn’t ‘come to the door’? There should have been a warrant for his immediate arrest, and the house put under siege until he surrendered. Instead, because the Tehama County Sheriff’s Department didn’t do their f(ornicating) jobs, five people are now stone-cold graveyard dead!

Who will be held accountable for this? Sheriff Dave Hencratt is directly responsible for the failure of his department to take the necessary and legally justified actions to place Kevin Janson Neal under arrest, to have him locked up when he should have been locked up, and because he failed to do his job, five people are dead. Will Sheriff Hencratt pay for his negligence by being brought up on criminal negligence charges? Will he at least be fired? Will anyone who was negligent in doing his duty be punished in any way?

This is what happens when judges, prosecutors and law enforcement personnel get lazy, don’t want to do their jobs when things get a bit tough or inconvenient, or allow plea bargains and lenient sentences. It doesn’t happen every time, but in too many cases, innocent people are injured or die because others don’t do their jobs.

It’s pretty clear to me: Sheriff Hencratt should be fired, at the very least, along with the rest of the supervisors in his department. If they can be brought up on criminal charges, they should be. They should be personally sued into penury by the families of the victims, though that’s probably impossible under the law. They need to be made examples of, so that other judges, prosecutors and law enforcement personnel get the message, and stop coddling criminals and start enforcing the law.
______________________________Cross-posted on The First Street Journal.